This radio message comes out from Vancouver. The post-apocalyptic landscape here is habitable. Food is plentiful. As is the rain.

I feel a little silly giving an update now, as I know a lot of you have been following my frenetic, overly-hashtagged adventures on Facebook (apparently, social media is alive and well post-apocalypse).

We've been here a week now, but it feels much longer. We arrived far too early to do anything fun on a Sunday morning, but luckily for us the border security guys had our backs. Assessing the short line of four people for work/study permits, the lady on 'door duty’ at immigration suggested we go get our bags from the carousel first, in case we were in there awhile. As my suitcase is always last off the plane, by the time we arrived back at immigration another flight had come in, carrying nothing but overseas university students. All in line in front of us.

Three hours later, when we finally left the airport, it was a much more reasonable time to be exploring downtown. And we were fresh from naps on the immigration department floor!

For the first week in Van we stayed in the West End, which is downtown right near Stanley Park. Our first morning we found that it was the 125 year anniversary celebration of Stanley Park, and a stunning blue sky day! Free live music, food and drink, beach time. Bliss.

The next week was filled with exploring (got a little sad as I was last here with dad), runs in the park and general setting ourselves up to LIVE HERE OMG. Still can’t quite believe that’s allowed.

We sat down just the other day and realised how much we have achieved in the first week. Canadian phone numbers, Social Insurance Numbers, two soccer teams for Laura, ordered furniture, moved into our sharehouse in Riley Park. Laura had an interview at a Law Firm and I had to turn down an interview tomorrow for a totally awesome company because I’ll be in Seattle. Sigh. Everybody cross your fingers they don’t find anyone they like better before I get back… because they said they’d love to interview me if they haven’t! Jobs are tight here, so it’s stressful!!

We discovered an amazing brunch place (best baked eggs EVER), explored a lot of Vancouver… and the best part – made friends!

We have spent time hanging out with British Steve, who I know from a past trip to the USA, and his great friends, met up with our friend Kevin for amazing vegetarian food and of course there are our lovely housemates Aussie Steve and Anna (who’s from Germany). We’re devastated that these two are moving out in October because they’re amazingly great!! They took us out to Gastown our first night in the new place and our personalities fit really well together.

We also met an amazing couple, Lindsey and Rob (an Aussie who plays soccer with Laura). This last weekend they adopted us and we drank beers in the sun, went out for pub dinner in Surrey and then went out to a backyard outdoor movie fundraiser!

We’ve also managed to make it to a Whitecaps game (free tickets woo!) and been serenaded by a 68 year old Kiwi woman on the aquabus. I do hope that my next blog entry will be a little more interesting and less a rapid-fire list of what I’ve done!

If there’s one overwhelming feeling we’ve both had while here, it’s that we love it. And REALLY REALLY want to stay. So we’re hoping the rumours that jobs are impossible to get are untrue. So far though, we’ve survived the apocalypse. Stay tuned for more adventures!